Gravenhurst Ontario, July 28, 2006

Vacation, All I ever wanted… Vacation, have to get away….

This story was written over a week ago. Now that I am back from the bush, it feels like a full lifetime ago. Ever wonder what techies do when they find themselves in a place without a clear connection to the 'Net?

My father and I spent part of last night war-driving the back-roads of Muskoka. Strange things happen in Canadian cottage country. Though I am only ten or eleven kilometers from a small city, no one around here appears to have an Internet connection. That's a bit of a bummer but it's not critical that I get a connection. I just wanted to show off in front of the old-man but to be honest I am in no hurry to forage through eight days worth of unviewed emails. At least it gave me and my dad a chance to talk, and tonight we've been talking tech, a topic that gives me a decided advantage in our conversation.

My father is a ham radio buff. I helped him string 100' of copper wire between two trees the day we arrived while my mother rolled her eyes at our efforts. That's why I figured the concept of war-driving would appeal to his inner-juvenile delinquent. It did and so we found ourselves trolling the backroads looking for that juicy spot where the best bytes would be found. As it goes, we had as much luck finding a hotspot as we've had finding fish but the time was very well spent.

"So, as I was saying," I said, "I am intensely interested in contextual distributed advertising." I get a sudden rush from the realization that, to him, I sound like he did to me twenty years ago. "Why should you ever be bothered with annoying adverts that don't mean anything to you? Moreover, why should the advertiser pay to reach people who aren't interested in whatever it is they are trying to sell?"

"Yeah, yeah", my father says, "I see your point but how can you make sure that only the right people can see the ads?"

I take a few minutes to explain (again), how Internet advertising is increasingly based on the contextual relationship between keywords entered by the end-user or keywords found in the content of any given webpage and the topic of the advertisement, pulling my favourite example, the suitcase murders three years ago in NYC and Google Ads appearing in the NYTimes. By now, the car is within a half mile of the small city of Gravenhurst and I have found several unsecured signals to leach in off of.

Deftly avoiding what must be an absurd amount of emails that have accumulated over the past week, I point my browser to Google and ask my father to name any topic he might be interested in. As he scans across the road to the water through the windshield of the massive Buick land-boat, he spies an even larger vessel, the ancient lake steamer SS Segwun. "OK, Jimmy (there are only two people in the world who get away with calling me Jimmy and the other one is lounging on the deck of our cottage), let's look up the Segwun."

"No problem Dad-dude", I say optimistically while typing the name into the search-bar. Sure enough, over two hundred references appear almost instantly. We pull the car to the side of the road to take a look at the information appearing on the screen. Now, the problem with my father is that when he gets interested in something, regardless of its complexity, he gets hooked. I just wanted to use something he would find interesting as an example but now that he can read up on one of the most famous antique ships in Northern Ontario it quickly becomes obvious we are going to be sitting here for a while.

"Umm, Dad… Does this flight serve drinks?" I ask tentatively.My father scowls at the suggestion he might carry open bottles of booze in the car but I know for a fact there is a half-full fiver of whiskey in the fishing tackle box he had packed behind his seat because I put it there when my brother-in-law and I took the canoe out the night before.

"Best to leave this one alone", I think to myself. There will be plenty of time for drinking when we rejoin my mother, sister and brother-in-law back at the cottage. I do have another trick or two up my sleeve though.

"Just to warn you Dad," I start, "the laptop only has three hours of battery life in it and I think we've already used half of it." I neglect to tell him that it can easily be recharged by simply plugging it in however being the eldest son in this tough as nails family I refuse to feel guilty about this minor deception. Besides which, I still owe him from that nasty Santa Clause episode that lasted eight or nine years.

"Oh, jeeze," he says, "sorry about that."

"No problem Dad, let's just go back to that Google screen that got us here eh?" I take the laptop back and hit the backspace button until we get to the first screen of results."Now then, see how the screen is basically divided into four sections? At the top, we have a few paid references. Next, we see some news relating to the region. Under that, we have ten free or organic search results. Now, while those a

re the ones that most of the users click on, they are not the ones we are interested in for the purposes of this conversation. Check out the references to the right of the screen. Those results are bought and paid for. Every time someone clicks on one of them, the business that placed the ad pays a fee ranging from a few cents to hundreds of dollars. Please don't click on any of them though, not unless you really intend to check out whatever it is they offer."

"Well, what good are these ads Jimmy? None of them have anything to do with the Segwin."

"That's true Dad but, check out what they are about.Here's one for the Taboo golf course just down the road from here. The next one down, that one is for that old resort up by Lake Joseph you and Mom were talking about last night. You'll find the same sort of thing when you do a search at Yahoo and MSN."

"Yeah, but we were looking for information about the Segwin," he says, "this junk has nothing to do with the Segwun."

"Well, we found that information in the free results. The ads you see here relate to the region on the assumption that if someone is researching the Segwun, they will also need a place to stay or something to do when they are in the area. So the marketing director of the golf course over there, he figures that if you are interested in that boat, you are likely going to be in the area. If you are in the area, you might also want to play a round on one of the greatest courses in Northern Ontario."

"Jeeze, yeah. Is that what you do?" he says with a whisper of wonder.

"Dad, on a writer's salary, I don't get to golf the greatest courses," I joke. "But if you are asking about the placement of those ads, the answer is going to have to be a yes and no answer. What we do in search marketing is help companies doing business on the Internet figure out which form of advertising will work best for them, depending on literally dozens of different factors. We also help coordinate the timing and appearance of those ads and I do a lot of copywriting to make those ads or the pages they are directed to appealing for the users. My partner, Andy, helps them build their sites so that users are immediately comfortable with the layout, colour schemes and the arrangement of elements on the page. Together, our goal is to make good sites better and to get as much relevant attention for those sites as possible."

"Wow, that's pretty cool Jim."

"Yeah Dad," I say smiling, "it's pretty cool alright.Let's go back. The lake is still, the night is young, and there's a couple of lake trout we ought to make an unscheduled appointment with. Let's go fishin'. There's a little surprise I put in your tackle box."

August 1, 2006

We've been here in Northern Ontario for ten days now. While I can get a cell phone signal, the only Internet signal I've been able to find came a few days ago when my father and I tried war-driving the backroads of the region. I suppose I could use my cell to access the Web and at least check my email but this is the first non-working vacation I've taken in my search marketing career. By necessity as well as desire, relaxation continues to trump my need for information.

It is about ten in the morning, give or take a few hours. We've just finished eating last night's catch (largemouth bass) for breakfast and the only thing I am interested in at this point is taking a snooze in the hammock my parents have strung between two trees overlooking the lake. My only fear is my nephew Tyler might think it a funny joke to flip Uncle Jim into the water. Fortunately he is busy trying to coax one of the dogs to jump off the dock so I am fairly safe for the time being. (Though I've informed him that soaking Uncle Jim would be one of the worst mistakes of his young life, I don't think he is taking me very seriously.)

I stretch my body into the hammock, close my eyes and let the light breeze swing me over the water and back across the land. Over the water and back across the land.Over the water and back acroszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Suddenly the soft jingle of my cell phone jolts me awake, (while over the water). I can hear it ringing off in the distance. Reflexive compulsion says I have to do is get to it, fast. Fortunately for me (though not for Tyler), I remember exactly where I am and pull my leg back to the shore before falling in. I get up and run to the cottage where my phone has been charging for the last seven days.It's Julian, a publicist working on behalf of Kanoodle.He is calling from NYC to schedule an interview with Kanoodle execs at the SES San Jose show next week.

"Gee Julian, I have to appologise for not responding to the email you say you sent me. I'm in the middle of northern Canada and there are more bugs than bytes up here."Julian gets a laugh out of the line, saving my reputation for getting back to PR agencies as quickly as possible.

Here I am in the middle of the great Canadian bush. For those unfamiliar with Northern Canada, it is vast. There is a large amount of unsettled land up here. I could take the canoe up the lake, paddle through the narrows three miles north of here and be far away from any human contact. There is not a heck of a lot of electronic infrastructure and there are more far more bugs than bytes. I have a new cell number that I had thought was unlisted.How the heck did Julian find me?

This process repeats itself six times before the day is out. I now have a full slate of interviews lined up for SES San Jose to go with my awestruck respect for the researchers working at New York's PR firms.